Contents

How to Get Unsampled Data in Google Data Studio

Data Studio offers a connector to Google Analytics. So why would anyone need anything other than Google’s own native connector? One reason is that there’s still data sampling.

That’s right, Data Studio uses the same Google Analytics APIs and therefore has the same sampling behavior as the Google Analytics web interface. While Data Studio supports higher sampling rates for Analytics 360 users, they will still experience sampling in their reports when those limits are exceeded.

This tutorial will show you how to create unsampled data sets from one or more Google Analytics accounts using Analytics Canvas and publish them for use in Data Studio.

You will need a trial license key or a subscription to use the features discussed in this tutorial. If you haven’t already done so, sign-up for a free 30-day trial and instantly get your license key so you can begin.

Open Analytics Canvas and apply your license key (you only need to do this once)

Go to New Source > Google Analytics > Reporting API V4

NOTE: Analytics 360 Customers can use the Reporting API V4, the Unsampled Reports API, or BigQuery to get their unsampled GA data

Select from one or more Google Analytics Views to include in your report:

Dial in your query, selecting the dimensions, metrics, segments, filters, and meta-data required for your reports. (For more information check out this tutorial and how-to make a Google Analytics query in Analytics Canvas)

On the Sampling tab, keep all of the default settings. If you are an Analytics 360 user and you know your data will be sampled even after partitioning, select the option to use Resource Quota and Canvas will do so if required:

Once your query has completed and the unsampled data has loaded to your Canvas, it’s a good time to do some data preparation. Canvas has all the tools you'll need to profile, clean, blend and otherwise prepare your data for analysis.

Data must get into Data Studio either through a Native data connector or a through a Community data connector that is accessible in Google Data Studio. Canvas supports the following 6 ways to get your data into Google Data Studio:

Detailed and easy-to-follow instructions for each of these options, as well as the respective utility and limitations of each, can be found in our guide 6 Ways to Get Data From SQL Server Into Google Data Studio. In short, once you have your data ready, simply go to the Block Library and under Export Blocks select and configure one of the above mentioned exports.